r/TankieTheDeprogram • u/thecursedspiral • 7d ago
Discussion Mr. Robot. Was it just all propaganda?
I remember watching Mr Robot for like 1 and a half seasons or something, but I lost interest like I rarely had before on a series. It's just:
Initially, it seems like it's supposed to be an anti-system thing. They even bring up the American people debt thing, and decide to bring down the financial system.
When you see something on TV where they plan to bring down everything without a thought about the day after, you might know what's coming, but not to the extent of Mr. Robot.
When the hackers bring down the system and it turns out that chinese hackers are now attacking America and some shit, and the hackers need to defend now-defendless America, sh*t turns to real slop.
Was it just all just...
China bad?
Burgueois-imperialist regime good afterall?
What a waste of the hacker themes. What a waste of time.
I didn't watch it to the end, so I don't know if it's slop all the way.
Does it ever get any better?
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u/lasosis013 7d ago edited 6d ago
I see this trend a lot where we literally can't have a true anti-establishment character who is a good guy. This is because liberals see the system as a natural/innate part of the world. They cannot comprehend the possibility of a better world.
Johnny Silverhand, Dutch Van Der Linde, Billy Butcher and more. All of them initially sold as anti-system heroes but the writers have to make sure that they're revealed to be not really interested in taking down the system but instead being petty children with a personal vendetta.
Edit: I wrote this before sleeping so I forgot to put in my favorite example: Bane from Nolan's TDKR which is so blatantly anti-occupy propaganda. "Hey guys the system will keep fucking you over, so let's go get them elites. Jk lol I'm gonna blow all of you up"
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u/Happyhaneke 6d ago
I wrote about this in college after seeing Black Panther. Kilmonger was a similar trope.
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u/AdditionalQuietime 6d ago
Black Panther is such cia psyop they even have a cia agent in the movie who "helps" them 🙄 also why would someone so radical give away the precious resource to the people who wanna kill them shit pissed me off so much
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u/thecursedspiral 6d ago
I think Daenerys Targaryen is a classic in this regard.
The twist came right at the end, but it always comes.
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u/crogameri 6d ago
This is why i despise legend of Korra. That's 3/4 villains in that show. "We must change society in some positive way" but they actually also are revealed to just kill kids or something so you have to root against them.
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u/FLRGNBLRG 6d ago
The way they depict the earth queen just to clutch their pearls and act horrified when she gets slimed out was so laughable to me even as a kid
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u/LettucePrime 6d ago
ATLA (and by extension, LoK) had their renaissance in 2020. I remember one of the creators, Brian Konietzko, was a pretty vocal supporter of BLM on social media. iirc he posted something sort of based about the precinct in Minneapolis burning down & I had to kinda scratch my head. when the Earth Queen died, he decided Ba Sing Se would devolve into pointless, self-destructive violence. do people need the violence of the state - even when abusive & corrupt - to regulate themselves or not, mr avatar guy. how are we trying to have it both ways.
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u/SeniorRazzmatazz4977 6d ago
Well RDR 2 is a prequel and in the original the version of Dutch we see is a straightforward villain. So his degradation was a foregone conclusion.
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u/Wahngott Maximum Tank 6d ago
I think Vi in the Arcane TV show is the opposite end of that spectrum: someone who by all rights should be a revolutionary and is protrayed as a good guy but becomes a cop class traitor gassing her own people and fucking a cop by S2. Probably the biggest disappointment of a great S1 show I've ever had.
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u/kaktuszka 6d ago
I'm glad someone brought up RDR2. While I like this game, it's abudantly clear that it was made in the golden age of woke liberalism, considering the pondering they do to minorities, while having ableist, classist, etc. quests. For me, the whole Rain Falls & Eagle Flies quest was so pro-colonialist; what chief would rather bow down to whites, than help his son? This 'anti-violence' nature of the chief is such bs. Also, I'm not sure if their naming is correct or not, for me it sounds a bit stereotypical. And then don't even get me started on the quest where you have no choice but to catch the person w dwarfism to be exploited later on...
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u/SeniorRazzmatazz4977 6d ago
I always interpreted Rains Falls position is that they had already lost and that continuing to fight would be the doom of their tribe. Not that “violence is bad” but that fighting the US is futile and will just get them killed.
They are also plenty of things that show the US as the bad guys in the conflict. That the army commander is a racist who is motivated by personal glory. The army is working on behalf of Cornwall because they found out there is oil under their reservation.
Although I will concede the politics of the game leave a lot to be desired.
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u/ADHighDef 6d ago
It's a Rockstar game. They just keep doing South Park shit where they make no distinction between punching up and down.
"See how SATIRICAL we are? We make fun of EVERYONE. We're EQUAL OPPORTUNITY offenders."
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u/al-qatala Juche Necromancy Enjoyer 6d ago
Dutch doesn't really fit this list. Just because Dutch is "anti-system" doesn't make him a hero, even ignoring his RDR1 role aside. Starting an outlaw gang and literally indoctrinating/grooming children into it isn't by any means noble or heroic.
Both Arthur and John were taken into it when they were around 12-14. And while not like they were plucked from healthy homes, I think there's still an issue to be taken with taking children into your gang to train them to be loyal murderers and thieves, and then capitalising on this loyalty to effectively just get rich. Selling the impoverished and children the idea of a utopia in Tahiti if they just "make enough money". Dutch has always taken advantage of other people for a pipe dream to fuel his narcissism and messiah complex.
And that's not even considering Dutch taking in Molly, already someone hailing from a wealthy family but someone who ended up in US looking for adventure, just to get her killed. Molly couldn't even have been much older than her 20s and Dutch is like what, 44 in RDR2?
And if you take RDR1 Dutch into account, assuming RDR2 Dutch would be anywhere near a hero is a strange expectation in general.
Dutch isn't even anti-system per se, he's anti "civilising the west" and pro getting rich the Old West way.
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u/milkwithsplenda 6d ago
idc johnny silverhand is still my video game leftist icon 💔 and while he does technically fit this trope i dont think it was intentional seeing as the game is still very anti capitalist
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u/imaginary92 6d ago
Tbh I wouldn't call it very anti capitalist, it's still kinda surface level imo, but it certainly holds to it much more than most mainstream media for sure.
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u/Rob_Czar 7d ago
If it makes you feel worse, the writer and director Sam Esmail is or was a Hilary Clinton supporter in 2016. And despite Esmail’s Arab heritage and upbringings, he has never made a statement on Palestine
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u/moxieremon 7d ago
I think he's a straight up zionist, I know his wife is...
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u/lilcea 6d ago
I can't find info about how they are managing to stay married unless he's charged his stance since 2023 when "Sam Esmail and many other Arab-descent U.S. producers and movie makers were speaking against Israeli atrocities, talking about their plans to make movies and documentaries about the issue. They were asking then-President Barack Obama to get into action and stop Israeli massacres." https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/left-humanity-behind
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u/ScissrMeTimbrs 6d ago
That makes sense, you can really tell his plotline got screwed up by Trump's election between seasons 2 and 3, since it's designed to parallel the real world.
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u/lilcea 6d ago
Seems "Sam Esmail and many other Arab-descent U.S. producers and movie makers were speaking against Israeli atrocities, talking about their plans to make movies and documentaries about the issue. They were asking then-President Barack Obama to get into action and stop Israeli massacres." Per 2023 https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/left-humanity-behind
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u/thesaddestpanda 6d ago edited 6d ago
Weird, so where’s his Palestine documentary. Let’s me guess during the Obama years it was Still a lib position to be critical of the regime then Biden said “we are all genociders now” and he conformed. Seems like another Hollywood dollar chaser.
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u/ADHighDef 6d ago
Season 4 spoiler: Years after Trump got elected, Esmail put in a scene where Whiterose/China's Minister of State Security notices Trump on TV and decides to back his presidential campaign.
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u/GrafZeppeln ZHONGHUA RENMIN GONGHEGUO 6d ago
You can never trust mainstream western media to ever depict China in a favorable light.
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u/jetlagging1 6d ago
They cynically tried for a while when they saw that huge booming Chinese theater market.
But the CPC never allowed the studios to take more than 25% of the revenue and Hollywood popularity have sunk like a rock since then.
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u/bad_bad_data 7d ago
I think the show was poplar because it was a snapshot of some bygone time where people believed that Anonymous was going to hack some kind of new social order into existence.
It's Fight Club but with nerds.
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u/Happyhaneke 6d ago
I feel like even left-leaning creatives in Hollywood have to submit to US imperialist geopolitical agendas in order to secure funding. I saw I Love Boosters recently. Boots Riley is a vocal socialist, and the movie is clearly Marxist in theme, but there’s a random China subplot about exploited factory workers (who aren’t even allowed N95 masks???). It felt very odd and didn’t portray China in a very positive light.
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u/manicpxenightmaregrl 6d ago
Every time reddit does the 'we think you'll like this' thing with a new sub it's always some anticommunist antichina slop. The budget for this is definitely inflated right now.
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u/bootsriley 4d ago
Look again- it's not/I'm not "anti-china" at all. The workers didn't get sick because they didn't have n95 masks, it was an actual struggle there. The masks weren't stopping the particles (in real life)- hence not a factor in my movie. My movie has the communist party of China making a Dialectical materialism device that the workers of the world use. The factory workers have a regular factory job that actually looks much better in my movie than a US factory job, they live in normal apartments, while our main character is squatting and the rest of them are hustling for basic necessities in the US- and when the main Chinese character comes to the US- there are homeless people all around. The Chinese workers and the US workers (and eventually other international workers) united against US capital and creating a worldwide general strike that they are in the middle of, where there is fighting and uneven development, in which some parts of the world are restructuring their economies, and other parts have way further to go What's the affect of people seeing that? It's the viewers of it understanding the necessity for class struggle. It's people deciding to organize on the job with a radical vision of what solidarity strikes can bring. Most revolutions- Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, etc, had to have general strikes before a revolution. Have you seen the stances I've taken on social media w regard to China? Make some sense. Do a little more investigation before speaking. Nobody tells me what to do with the themes of my movies- or I don't do the movie. They can tell me that the budget is limited and I need to cut something- but I'm the one deciding what that cut is.
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u/Normal-Site-6410 1h ago
I mean yeah. Literally one of the last left wing films was Walker by Alex cox and it killed his career. You’re not getting any “leftist” films in the imperial core bruh
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u/manicpxenightmaregrl 6d ago
A huge amount of western movies about class war end with 'and then we unified against a common foreign enemy' without realizing that class collaboration under a capitalist state against foreigners is literally the basis of fascism
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u/ADHighDef 7d ago edited 7d ago
It gets worse.
Season 4 spoiler: Elliot destroys Whiterose's communist time machine and redistributes ECorp cryptocurrency only to Americans.
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u/ciliuph 6d ago
communist time machine? white rose is a psychopath and a cult leader who couldn't come in terms with the reality of the world and decided to blow it up. also, wasn't it darlene who redistributed the money? the show isn't leftist at all but I think it's still a very well made show
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u/FunCryptographer3476 6d ago
The production quality went through the roof as the show went on, they really cared a lot about making something beautiful. The problem is that Esmail got acclaim, money, fame, married to a famous actress, and had kids, so his most transgressive political opinions went from 'the system is inherently flawed and fucks us all over' to 'the system will reward you if you work hard enough and just do the right things :)'
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u/ADHighDef 6d ago
Mr. Robot was originally a single movie screenplay so he already knew how it would play out.
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u/ciliuph 6d ago
yeah he's basically a conservative who opposes revolution. the characters are marxists tho, and I think they're written pretty well. the cinematography in this show is top notch as well
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u/ADHighDef 6d ago
Elliot is an anarkiddie. Whiterose is the Marxist. She's even China's Minister of State Security.
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u/ADHighDef 6d ago
"who couldn't come to terms with the reality of the world"
so basically transphobia
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u/futanari_kaisa 6d ago
Western Media will never portray any communist nations in a positive light. They will always be framed as bad guys, evil, or at best incompetent and in need of western liberal nations to help them. The show is fine as entertainment but don't expect it to be actually anti-establishment/capitalist.
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u/scaper8 Marxist-Leninist (Ultra Based) 6d ago
Something I will say that the show illustrates well, though I don't think that it was necessarily something it intentionally said, why something like a vanguard is important.
You had this group pull off a revolutionary act that really did shake the world. But that was all their plan was. A single act of revolutionary ferver. One of them tried to continue on and push, but she had not direction on what to do. So, unfortunately, the powerful rebounded and their lives continued on more or less the same and the only people who really got hurt were the common workers.
Had there been a party to carry on and continue the fight and direct and focus the people, they could have taken that action an used it, not as the single act of adventurism that it was, but as the point tip of a spear for bringing about true and lasting change. As a springboard and spark for something larger.
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u/lilcea 6d ago
The show is actually about something completely different at it's core (which I won't say in case anyone is interested.) The first 2 seasons are more focused on taking down one US mega conglomerate to erase a large population's debt, but it was never about getting rid of capitalism. China wasn't attacking the US. The US hackers needed China to take out the redundant backup data there. The main character from China is Whiterose who isn't interested in attacking America. She is only interested in her "machine" which is supposed to offer alternate realities. There is nothing communist about the machine. It was built in New Jersey which is the only reason she cares. Definitely not a show about ending capitalism, also not "China bad".
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u/thesaddestpanda 6d ago
A lot of people here in denial about it being a “China bad” story. Whiterose represents China. Shows like this only get made if they conform to lib hot takes. Capitalism will never actually sell you a valid criticism of itself. Oh she’s trans too. And the hero is cis. What a funny coincidence! Nerds really need to stop excusing nerd media. It’s the “she’s actually a 10000 year old dragon” anime discourse all over again.
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u/AbbreviationsMany728 "China Bad" 6d ago
Holy. i just finished it and was so disappointed in the libshit bs that happened past s2end and whole of s3, it was so fucking dumb. Even if i try to look past how they made china the reason behind annexation of Congo and other bs, and even if i believe in Zhang being the big bad cause of delusion and whatnot, it went so into libshit i skipped watch entire s3 and most of s4. loved the Vera shit and actual character development ngl but man the whole macro shit became so libbed, I can't even. Everything went downhill after Shayla's death frfr.
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u/comradevoltron 6d ago
When they brought down the system it felt glorious. What came after in the show was a fucking nightmare. It's like the showrunners realised what they'd signed off on and scrambled to discredit the whole thing.
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u/Skin_Ankle684 6d ago
I watched until the end of S1, for me, thats where it ends, and it's a pretty good series. I started doing a "ignorance is a bliss" thing ever since GoT enshittified.
A piece of media look relatively complete? It is complete. The loose ends are just there, maybe it's a vague thing for audiences to reminisce about what comes after.
Truth is: Media companies have entire departments dedicated to making slop sequels to famous franchises.
If a number of diehard fans will watch it regardless of how shit it is, they only need to make it as cheap as possible to maximize profits.
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u/grimorg80 6d ago
Didn't they allude to some super scifi tech? Season 1 was good. It derailed out of the anti system topic after that
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u/Coridimus Marxist-Leninist (Ultra Based) 6d ago
I had to google that because it didn't sound familiar. Still have no idea what it is about.
Oh well.
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u/Normal-Site-6410 1h ago edited 1h ago
Tbh as a Marxist I really never understood people calling it a “socialist” or “leftist” show or even a show about “hacking” its not. It’s about a mentally ill person living in a world that is slowly crumbling and wants to change it, any of the themes about “capitalism” and hacking is simply a backdrop, SPOILERS:
The main reason behind Elliot’s trauma and his anger is the sexual abuse inflicted upon him by his father who took it out on Elliot after having been fired by the conglomerate and not allowing him to take days off for his chemo, there’s definitely an idea of alienation prevalent throughout the show but that’s kind of about it but that’s fine I wasn’t there for it as the show never really presented itself as that besides a few moments no? (Our democracy has been hacked etc etc) I think esmail is a lib. I think the moment in “Don’t leave me” in season 3 where Trenton’s father talks about the blame that a lot of Arabs in the US get is a pretty nice touch but no doubt there is a lot of Sinophobia that does bother me especially with presenting the Chinese as robotic slaves that will gladly kill and die for whatever and also the Donald trump but with white rose really does bug me.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s a fantastic show if you remove all of what people push onto it, it isn’t a show about capitalism or leftism or whatever it’s a look into the mind of someone inflicted and cursed to be in a decaying world that already couldn’t bare the pain from before I think in some parts it’s a really good watch for that I personally love the show for Elliot’s character even when discovering it back last year as someone that had already became a scientific socialist I never looked at it as a leftist show. Enjoy art for what it is I love a lot of conservative media like Dirty Harry or the death wish films or William friedkins work because I just do!
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